Dear David,
       I'm pleased to see that expression 'crumbs' still has currency
somewhere in the English speaking world; why just the other day I was
explaining that ancient locution to my grand-daughter. Whether you need to
gloss crumbs for Alison I don't know.
           Wystan


-----Original Message-----
From: david.bircumshaw [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 4 April 2003 1:42 p.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Joys of Shit


Crumbs, Alison

I hardly know where to begin on this. Well, I have no problem with the
notion that the poem doesn't work, please remember that it is only something
I drafted a few hours ago, I've only just re-read it myself, it's definitely
not formally integrated for instance, but I'm at a loss at some comments.
The metaphor of shitting is meant to predominate, you know the
colloquialisms on the lines of 'crap falling on your head', that's the whole
idea of the piece whether or not it works, that this war is like people
being shitted on all round. The link of bodily pollution and what is not
good is ancient in literature, consider the link between money and what is
thought dirty in Great Expectations for instance. The disgust at the body is
about some bodies going wrong, like Generals, however I don't see why
disgust for the body is in itself a forbidable matter, else all almost of
Swift should be banned. I do hope your remarks about sexism weren't
including me, as you well know, I am very scrupulous on this matter and will
interrogate myself for months about any possible occurrences, the false
analogy to birth at the start of my piece was meant to suggest a distortion
of what should be. I'm not making any claims for it but my intentions were
good.

In Good Faith and Friendship


Best

Dave



David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 1:25 AM
Subject: Re: The Joys of Shit


At 12:36 AM +0100 4/4/03, david.bircumshaw wrote:
>the linking of waste and birth comes
>from the view of the war.

Well, it's fair to say it doesn't work for me, and irony doesn't make
it work either.  The disgust focuses on the body rather than on
violence; the bombers are subservient to the image of shitting,
rather than the other way around.  Sure, sexual violence and war are
very intimately linked - no war has ever taken place without sexual
violence, from the enslaving of women by the Greeks to the fall of
Berlin to Mai Lai, and I know the training of American GIs involves a
huge dose of conditioning in the rhetoric of sexual violence - but
birth is by no means an act of violence.  I think if you want an
irony to work in it, you'll have to think it through a little more.

I found Dom's poem less uncomfortable on that front: I read it not so
much as homophobic as expressing the suppressed homoeroticism of
violent conflict.  There was a similar passage in one of Genet's
novels - Funeral Rites?

Thanks Rebecca and Jill for your notes on the tone overnight; I might
remind everyone here of the list rule against sexism.

Best

A


A
--


Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/

Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/